Applying the TOPSIS method and multi-objective integer programming model for selecting and assigning senior staff to production workshops based on their preferences

Human resources are considered a competitive advantage in organizations, and according to the executive position of staff, the relative importance of the competitive advantage is enhanced so that the executive managers, and the senior staffs particularly in the production line, are of particular importance to company owners. Selecting competent and committed senior staff as well as maintaining them based on their satisfaction is one of the key factors in the success of organizations. Therefore, this paper aims to study the selection and assignment of senior staff problems so that they are selected based on their competency to manage the production workshops, and then they are assigned to the workshops based on their preferences. For this purpose, an integrated model of mathematical programming and Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MCDM) is developed to select competent senior staff and assign them to the workshops based on their preferences.

In this paper, some of the staff as potential options have been determined, and then, their preferences to manage all workshops have been calculated using the TOPSIS technique. Also, a multi-objective integer programming model has been developed to select competent senior staff among all potential options and to assign them to the workshops based on their preferences. In this paper, a multi-objective global criteria method has been proposed as an approach to solving the selection and assignment problem.

The required data were collected through questionnaires and interviews with potential options. Consequently, the results indicated that the proposed method (weighted global criteria) outperforms the simple global criteria approach as well as the traditional method based on the decision of the managers and experts.

Research limitations/implications:

 The results were limited to the case of production workshops in an appliances plant, and all data were deterministic. Respectively, some directions as opportunities for future research were suggested. The first suggestion is to apply the current model in other production systems, and the second suggestion is to use fuzzy logic for developing both the fuzzy TOPSIS and fuzzy mathematical programming model based on the expert’s knowledge.

Practical implications: 

Since the non-optimal assignment of the staff to the workplaces increases the costs, and assigning them disregarding their preferences leads to staff dissatisfaction, the production system would be affected. Therefore, the lifecycle of the organization can be threatened. Therefore, the optimal staff assignment problem can be one of the most critical management challenges in industries.

Originality/value: 

To the best of our knowledge, there is no research in the literature on the staff assignment problem that considers preferences and competencies simultaneously as studied in this paper. Therefore, the following contributions to the literature are underlined: - - Selecting and assigning senior staff to production workshops, considering a multi-objective problem - - Collecting the evaluation criteria of preferences for the problem from the literature to determine final preferences for selecting the workshop - Integrating the integer programming (IP) model and TOPSIS to extend the new model of staff assignment problem